Latino Landscapes: A Transnational History of Urban America since 1950

A book-length examination of how Latin American migrants and U.S.-born Latinos have created distinctive forms of city life on both sides of the Rio Grande.At a time when immigration is at the top of the nation's agenda, public understanding of the issue is often based upon misapprehensions about human migration and its effect on everyday life in the communities of the United States. I intend to write a widely accessible history of how Latin American migrants have settled in U.S. cities and transformed their adopted neighborhoods while at the same time rebuilding the small towns from which they came. In so doing, I hope to bring five years of scholarly research and writing into the public realm in a form that helps people understand the origins and implications of the growing interdependence of people in cities and towns across the Americas. I do so by exploring the history of the biggest immigrant barrios in two of the nation's largest cities: Chicago's Little Village community and Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhood.